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Home | Ask the Recruiter | Changing Careers: From Health Education to Hospitality
Question
I have worked in the medical education business for over 15 years. As part of my responsibilities, I was a meeting planner and then director of the meeting planning department. At this point in my career, I would like to build on this experience and pursue job opportunities in hospitality, especially convention services. Do you have any suggestions on how I might proceed?
Answer
Making a career change of this sort--from medical education to hospitality--depends in part on how prominently meeting planning figured into your overall duties. Since you were director of the meeting planning department, my guess is that it's a fairly significant part of your experience, and certainly, you should feature it prominently on your resume.
One thing you haven't mentioned is whether you have any formal education in this field. I'm going to assume two things: 1) since you went into medical education first, you don't have a degree or even a minor related to hospitality, and 2) from the way you describe your career progression, you do at least have significant on-the-job training in the field. In that case, the depth of your experience may well be enough to overcome the lack of a degree, though in a perfect world, a degree in hospitality, restaurant management, or hotel management would be the ideal complement to your experience. Certainly, at this stage of your career, even a two-year degree in the field should be enough to attract the interest of employers.
Another factor for you to think about is location. The strength of the convention/hospitality job market depends a great deal on where you live. If you are already in, or can relocate to, a year-round convention destination, you could greatly increase your career prospects in this field.
One thing you haven't mentioned is whether you have any formal education in this field. I'm going to assume two things: 1) since you went into medical education first, you don't have a degree or even a minor related to hospitality, and 2) from the way you describe your career progression, you do at least have significant on-the-job training in the field. In that case, the depth of your experience may well be enough to overcome the lack of a degree, though in a perfect world, a degree in hospitality, restaurant management, or hotel management would be the ideal complement to your experience. Certainly, at this stage of your career, even a two-year degree in the field should be enough to attract the interest of employers.
Another factor for you to think about is location. The strength of the convention/hospitality job market depends a great deal on where you live. If you are already in, or can relocate to, a year-round convention destination, you could greatly increase your career prospects in this field.
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